1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video data copying apparatus, a video data copying method, a recording medium, and an integrated circuit for copying video data recorded onto one recording medium to another recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Semiconductor recording memories such as SD memory cards, optical disks such as DVDs and BDs, magnetic recording media such as video cassettes, and so on are all examples of recording media onto which video data can be recorded. Furthermore, HDDs are also recording devices onto which video data can be recorded. The recording capacity of such recording media and recording devices covers a range spanning from several MB (megabytes) to several TB (terabytes). Therefore, when copying large amounts of video data that have been recorded into a high-capacity recording medium onto a low-capacity recording medium, there are cases where all of the video data on the copy origin cannot be copied onto the copy destination recording medium.
Accordingly, there is a technique whereby when data is copied in such a manner, the video data in the copy origin is automatically divided so that it can be recorded onto the copy destination recording medium, thereby implementing automatic copying from a single high-capacity recording medium to plural low-capacity recording media (for example, see Patent Document 1: JP 2005-182864A). Such video data copying is carried out as long as there is space remaining in the copy destination recording medium, and when there is no space remaining in the copy destination recording medium, information indicating the point to which the video data has been copied is recorded in the copy origin recording medium; based on this information, the remaining video data that has not yet been copied is detected, and that part of the video data is divided off and copied into another recording medium.
Through this, it is possible to provide an electronic device capable of copying video data of a size greater than the capacity of a copy destination recording medium to plural copy destination recording media, whereby the user does not need to pay any particular attention to the division of the video data.
However, according to the abovementioned technique, the copy origin video data is divided based only on whether or not it will fit in the space remaining in the copy destination recording medium, and when scenes and the like of the video data are considered, there is a problem in that the divided video data may be split at an unnatural position in a scene. Here, “scene” refers, in the case of video data captured, for example, by an imaging apparatus, to a series of data that is semantically connected, such as video data spanning from when a record start button has been pressed at the time of capturing to when a record stop button is pressed thereafter. Consider, for example, a case where video data captured by an imaging apparatus is recorded into an SD memory card mounted in the imaging apparatus. In such a case, when the record start button is pressed, the record stop button is then pressed after imaging has been carried out for a predetermined amount of time, the record start button is once again pressed, and the record stop button is again pressed after imaging has been carried out for a predetermined amount of time, the video data recorded in the SD memory card mounted in the imaging apparatus will include two scenes.
Having been conceived in light of the aforementioned problems, it is an object of the present invention to achieve an electronic device including a copying function (a video data copying apparatus), a video data copying method, a recording medium, and a integrated circuit that can, when copying video data from a high-capacity recording medium to a plurality of low-capacity recording media, prevent the video data from being divided at an unnatural position in a scene of the video data.